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Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster
Though it was banned in the UK in 1999, asbestos still kills more than 5,000 people every year. How did this happen? And what can we do about it?
Asbestos was once known as the “magic mineral.” Cheap, versatile, and tough, it was used in a wide range of industrial and consumer products, from fireproofing spray on warships, to insulation panels in high-rise towers, to tablecloths and ironing board covers. But from the dawn of the industry in the late 1800s, it was apparent that asbestos dust was particularly harmful to workers’ lungs. Later, it became clear that even trivial exposure can cause incurable cancers.
Bad Dust traces a history of the asbestos disaster and shows how the material became so deeply interwoven with the functions of the British state. The first half of the book examines the mining of the mineral in apartheid South Africa, its manufacturing in the North of England, and its use on the shipyards and building sites of Glasgow. The second half of the book then explores the development of a coherent anti-asbestos movement from the late 1970s. Arrayed against a powerful industry, and against parts of the trade union movement, anti-asbestos groups fought for a ban on the material.
Asbestos was used extensively in schools, hospitals, and housing built in the post-war period. The banning of the material twenty-five years ago was not accompanied by a coordinated removal programme—much of it remains in place, slowing degrading and placing us all at risk. Far from a problem solved, Bad Dust shows that the asbestos disaster has really only just begun.
Asbestos was once known as the “magic mineral.” Cheap, versatile, and tough, it was used in a wide range of industrial and consumer products, from fireproofing spray on warships, to insulation panels in high-rise towers, to tablecloths and ironing board covers. But from the dawn of the industry in the late 1800s, it was apparent that asbestos dust was particularly harmful to workers’ lungs. Later, it became clear that even trivial exposure can cause incurable cancers.
Bad Dust traces a history of the asbestos disaster and shows how the material became so deeply interwoven with the functions of the British state. The first half of the book examines the mining of the mineral in apartheid South Africa, its manufacturing in the North of England, and its use on the shipyards and building sites of Glasgow. The second half of the book then explores the development of a coherent anti-asbestos movement from the late 1970s. Arrayed against a powerful industry, and against parts of the trade union movement, anti-asbestos groups fought for a ban on the material.
Asbestos was used extensively in schools, hospitals, and housing built in the post-war period. The banning of the material twenty-five years ago was not accompanied by a coordinated removal programme—much of it remains in place, slowing degrading and placing us all at risk. Far from a problem solved, Bad Dust shows that the asbestos disaster has really only just begun.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
320 pages, Paperback
Published September 9, 2025
27 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 30, 2025
Stop me if you've heard this one.
This book is about asbestos, the erstwhile miracle material for its fireproof qualities that is highly unsafe to life in any of its forms. Titled as a history of the disaster, and billed as a social history, it is more specifically a labor history, focused on those working with asbestos and its manufactured derivatives, and the fights that workers have had for protection from or compensation for the harms of asbestos, something that there is no safe amount of exposure to, with an industry looking to minimize or ignore the risks and then to evade the responsibilities, despite it being something where the deadly nature of the thing was known early.
The book is plain about the ongoing nature of the disaster. The outline of the story is familiar to things like tobacco, lead, and global warming, and has an unfortunate tendency to lend credence to the anti-science thinking that proliferates in the current administration when you see how many lies have be policy, backed by the government. Outside of people whose prior exposure is still leading to negative health effects, asbestos' bans in the UK, US, and Europe have only led to industries relocating in the poorer sections of the world. The inherent risks of asbestos remain in place, since the usual method for dealing with things was to encapsulate it, giving decaying buildings a sort of time-bomb nature.
Other than rectifying the somewhat forgotten nature of the disaster, the good thing about the book is the focus on the people and organizations fighting the good fight for safety and accountability. It is empathetic without falling into maudlin, and does a good job of providing the narrative history while keeping to the human. The only point where this slips up is that, being a labor history of a century plus, the list of organizations and their abbreviations is formidable and requires some effort to track.
The weakness here is that the book keeps swinging for homers instead of landing the easy singles and doubles. The author wants to make asbestos into an exemplar for everything in global Capitalism. This is a savvy move at points. A good example is the history of the NHS. Since the problem with asbestos-related health matters existed at the point of its coming about, the story of what happened to those health matters in the formation, as well as what could have happened, is instructive for thinking about the process in general: a microhistory that creates a teachable form of the macrohistory.
But the book wants to make it about capital T-Theory. There is a certain 'Q.E.D. Marxism' when the author takes a historical event and uses it to establish things far outside of the facts at hand. It was done more coherently and honestly than the last rightward take like this that I reviewed, but it remains as useless when the book already has an interesting enough project. Once again, authors, I urge you to resist the temptation to make your history sexy.
My thanks to the author, Tom White, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Repeater Books, for making the ARC available to me.
This book is about asbestos, the erstwhile miracle material for its fireproof qualities that is highly unsafe to life in any of its forms. Titled as a history of the disaster, and billed as a social history, it is more specifically a labor history, focused on those working with asbestos and its manufactured derivatives, and the fights that workers have had for protection from or compensation for the harms of asbestos, something that there is no safe amount of exposure to, with an industry looking to minimize or ignore the risks and then to evade the responsibilities, despite it being something where the deadly nature of the thing was known early.
The book is plain about the ongoing nature of the disaster. The outline of the story is familiar to things like tobacco, lead, and global warming, and has an unfortunate tendency to lend credence to the anti-science thinking that proliferates in the current administration when you see how many lies have be policy, backed by the government. Outside of people whose prior exposure is still leading to negative health effects, asbestos' bans in the UK, US, and Europe have only led to industries relocating in the poorer sections of the world. The inherent risks of asbestos remain in place, since the usual method for dealing with things was to encapsulate it, giving decaying buildings a sort of time-bomb nature.
Other than rectifying the somewhat forgotten nature of the disaster, the good thing about the book is the focus on the people and organizations fighting the good fight for safety and accountability. It is empathetic without falling into maudlin, and does a good job of providing the narrative history while keeping to the human. The only point where this slips up is that, being a labor history of a century plus, the list of organizations and their abbreviations is formidable and requires some effort to track.
The weakness here is that the book keeps swinging for homers instead of landing the easy singles and doubles. The author wants to make asbestos into an exemplar for everything in global Capitalism. This is a savvy move at points. A good example is the history of the NHS. Since the problem with asbestos-related health matters existed at the point of its coming about, the story of what happened to those health matters in the formation, as well as what could have happened, is instructive for thinking about the process in general: a microhistory that creates a teachable form of the macrohistory.
But the book wants to make it about capital T-Theory. There is a certain 'Q.E.D. Marxism' when the author takes a historical event and uses it to establish things far outside of the facts at hand. It was done more coherently and honestly than the last rightward take like this that I reviewed, but it remains as useless when the book already has an interesting enough project. Once again, authors, I urge you to resist the temptation to make your history sexy.
My thanks to the author, Tom White, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Repeater Books, for making the ARC available to me.
January 13, 2026
Essential reading! Truely shocking the lengths some companies/manager would go to in order to profiteer at the cost og other people's lives
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews